Its definitely not. The humming goes away completely when the display (but not disk) sleeps. This is also when you notice just how loud the humming really is.
Its definitely not a mechanical noise, its an electrical hum. Like when you dim the lights in a room. The dimmer unit hums louder the lower the light level goes. Its exactly the same noise.
I have the same problem. When my brightness is all the way down you hear the humming and when its all the way up you hear it also. But half way its almost gone. I also got another humming/pitch sound at the back of my iMac. It looks like it's coming from the harddrive, like the fan of the harddrive or harddrive itself keeps rotating, i think it's the fan though because when i turned it off you could clearly hear the fan spinning and going off. Anyone has the some problem as me with the hard disk fan humming as wel l?